Does Social Media Make You Inept or Tech Savvy? (Opinion)

I recently saw the new James Bond movie, Spectre, and it majorly inspired some social commentary for me about the nature of information sharing and the new commonality of public lifestyles.
Although I digress on how advisable it is to base social criticism after a fictional story line about a spy, I will continue.

One of the main themes of Spectre is the power of information; especially in a day and age so overrun with computers. Where does the information so readily available about peoples’ lives go? What are the boundaries of privacy online? Most importantly, how do they influence boundaries of privacy in real life?

I’m massively weary of social media, and I don’t like the internet all that much; an ironic fact considering my dependence and use of it right now, to share this article. It is a self-irony I resent, but I’m so dependent on technology, it’s hard to suppress my use of it.

I still don’t have an Instagram, or a Twitter, or the increasingly less-popular Facebook. Whenever people ask if I have an Instagram: a question so eerily common as an inquiry concerning a favorite color, they stare at me, in utter disbelief.

What kind of social outsider doesn’t have an Instagram? They’ll never say it, but that’s probably what goes through their heads.

Social media is exceedingly unhealthy: it creates insecurity and promotes nothing but comparison. Why do you think people are so obsessed with the amount of followers they have?
Followers are a source of confidence and security. It proves that you have friends, or people who might care a smidgen about your life. But it’s empty. No one has a thousand friends. No one.

In reality, there are probably only five people who really care about you in your life; if not less. And putting value in your followers is a sorry mistake. Why care what an online ghost thinks? What’s the value of a saccharine, hot-air comment on your picture, when you feel alone and subdued; the days of emptiness and despair?
Comparison is another evil. Realize: social media is the idealized portrait of someone’s life, you see what they want you to see.

I hate my cynicism, but there is absolutely no way anyone sips Hubert’s lemonade at Laguna Beach every 2-5 days or “gets lit” at a “dope AF party” on the weekly. It’s an absolute lie.

Humans like to play charades, and adopt different facades; especially as to what their life is like. Again, it’s a source of confidence. Am I having as much fun as so and so? Am I as beautiful? Am I as witty?

Someone losing confidence concerning the security of their relationships or the quality of their life is not benefiting from social media. In fact, it is simply debilitating them.

There are a myriad of ways to reach out and construct relationships with people. Although the common argument for the benefit of social media is its promotion of connectability-all I’ve seen social media do is disconnect people from the physical presence of the now, the company of those they have in one existing, perfectly-present second. Ask yourself why you need social media, and try living without it. See the joy of living without being enslaved to an online network of false reality.

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